Hanging strawberry pots meet gardening needs for growing up.

My third pick for a “Best Of” the new products at the 2012 ProGreen industry tradeshow is the Urban Garden Pocket Planter by NCV.

These light-weight plastic containers will make small-space gardening easier.

I can imagine a row of these clever pots hanging from a balcony container garden or a single one brightening a drab spot on the patio.

The pots can be planted to grow strawberries, but they would be great for other kinds of gardening, too. The company suggests planting them with themed herb gardens, like an Italian culinary garden with basil, parsley, oregano and thyme.

If you have a spot to hang a pot, you can fill it with herbs, baby greens, annual flowers, succulents and more. The top is open so taller plants, like peppers, can be planted there.

The planters are made of injected molded plastic and have a textured finish. They can be taken apart to make shipping and storage easier.

Another of my “Best Of” selections at the 2012 ProGreen tradeshow is a new idea for container gardening called Smart Pots.

If you’ve followed my blog, you know that every year I have a big container garden of vegetables. I’ve grown all kinds of vegetables and herbs and I’ve grown them in all kinds of containers.

But this year I get to try something new: a Smart Pot aeration container I picked up at ProGreen.

The Smart Pot is a foldable fabric container that’s said to be better than plastic containers because it releases heat from the pot, aerates the root zone and stops roots from circling inside the container. That’s because the container air prunes the plant’s root structure.

There are 4 different container sizes from 7 to 20 gallons. Gardeners can grow garlic, leeks, greens, herbs, beans and small annuals in the 7-gallon size; a 20-gallon Smart Pot is made to grow tomatoes, melons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and winter squash.

Even though my vegetable garden is covered with 15 inches of snow today, gardening season is just around the corner.

Gardeners who used plant protectors last gardening season outsmarted the rest of us who didn’t.

There was such a chilly start to last year’s vegetable gardening season, plant protectors helped gardeners in the long run.

If you want to get your garden going faster this year, there’s a new design in plant protection you might like to try that’s especially EZ.

In the past I’ve used plant protectors so I could plant earlier, but I disliked the process of setting up the plastic covers and filling them with water.

It’s downright uncomfortable to be standing in a cold garden with wet feet.

But  Debbie Shauer has invented a new product called EZ-walls Plant Protectors. Last year she sent me a free sample to try in my garden. I have to say it had me at how easy it was to fill with water.

BBB Seed is a big supporter of Colorado’s Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign.

BBB Seed is a a small, family-owned company with a big heart.

For the last two years, BBB Seed has donated thousands of vegetable and herb seeds to metro Denver’s Plant a Row for the Hungry gardening campaign.

But the company has much more to offer gardeners than its complete line of heirloom vegetable seeds.

In addition to Aunt Ruby’s German green tomatoes, Orange Sun and Sweet Chocolate peppers, and Black Beauty eggplant, BBB seed carries a line of native wildflower seed, cool and warm season grasses, and grass and wildflower mixes.

One special mix gardeners will be interested in this year is the Honey Source Wildflower mix.

The Honey Source combination of seeds was specially created as help for honey bees. It contains a long-blooming mix of nectar and pollen-rich annuals and perennials that attract bees to the garden and that are beautiful, too.

My vegetable pick of the week: Red Mini Bell peppers.

One of my favorite vegetable plants in my container garden last summer was a crop of adorable mini bell peppers.

These miniature versions of red bell peppers made gardening (and eating) fun.

I selected mini bells to add to my other pepper selections because I haven’t had good luck growing full-size bell peppers. I blame that on having a short growing season combined with fickle spring weather.

But these minis meant sweet pepper success!

I started several miniature bell pepper plants from seed and waited until mid-June to transplant them into the garden. Night-time temperatures weren’t consistently warm enough for planting earlier.

Each plant grew to about 24 inches in containers in my small-space garden and took only 60 days to start producing peppers. Each pepper was only several inches tall and wide, but the flesh was tender, sweet, and quite flavorful.

On Monday I heard from a beginning gardener with a question about how to find non-GMO vegetable seeds for her first gardening efforts.

Her Question

“You’ve been on my mind the past few days with all the talk about Monsanto and GMO seed.

Do you have a resource for buying seeds?

I’m going to start my own little garden this spring and thought I’d see.”

My Answer

When you’re buying vegetable and herb seeds for your garden, look for companies that have signed the Safe Seed Pledge.

Scroll down the list to find your state. In Colorado, you’ll see the same seed companies that donate seed packets for the Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign that I organize every year in Denver:

BBB Seeds
Lake Valley Seeds
Botanical Interests
Renee’s Garden (in California)

About the Safe Seed Pledge

I asked and gardeners answered. Here’s a list of their top tomato recommendations for planting this season.

Every year I plant a dozen or more new-to-me tomato varieties in my garden. But with hundreds of delicious tomato choices, I needed help narrowing my selections. So in November I asked gardeners on my VegetableGardener.com blog to help me decide by giving me a list of their favorite tomatoes to grow.

I asked for gardeners’ top tomato recommendations in three categories:

Best medium-to-large tomato
Best small or cherry tomato
Most flavorful tomato

Twenty-six gardeners answered the call and gave me plenty of tomatoes to think about. I thought you might like to see the list, in case you’re looking for some new tomato varieties to add to your gardening efforts this season.

The last Saturday in January is designated as National Seed Swap Day. You can celebrate with these ideas for making seed sowing simpler this season.

Many beginning gardeners fret about starting their garden from seed. I know, because I worried about every seed I planted when I first started gardening, too.

But the basics of planting seed are simple. Gardeners plant seeds in the ground, cover seeds with soil and keep soil moist until seeds germinate.

Seeds want to sprout and grow–and many do without our help.

But for as long as people have been planting seeds, they’ve been trying to make seed sowing easier.

Native Americans rolled their seeds in clay balls to protect them from sun, wind, birds, and other animals. The seed balls weren’t planted, but broadcast on top of the ground so when it rained, the clay would melt and start germination.

Dr. Bob Gough may have departed the gardening world last year, but he left gardeners with more than 17 books on horticulture including The Guide to Rocky Mountain Vegetable Growing.

I never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bob Gough face-to-face, but I got to know him anyway. He was the author of the “Ask Dr. Bob” gardening column on the pages of Zone 4 magazine. One of his last books, written together with his wife Cheryl Moore-Gough, is one of my go-to resources for vegetable gardening in a tough climate.

Soon we’ll all be fretting over chilly days that delay planting, so now’s a good time to pick up a copy of this book and tap into some of Dr. Bob’s vegetable growing wisdom.

The book is a good guide for any gardener, but it was written especially for gardeners who grow in short-season climates like we have in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming,

How to Grow Tabasco Sauce, Step 1, included information on growing Tabasco pepper plants from seed. Step 2 is an illustrated guide for using the fresh peppers to make your own Tabasco sauce.

After the Tabasco peppers have ripened to the perfect color of red, pick them from the plant, wash, and carefully remove the stems and green caps. Chop peppers and place them in a saucepan. It’s always a good idea to wear kitchen gloves whenever handling fresh peppers.

Add about 1 1/2 cups or more of white vinegar to the pan of chopped Tabasco peppers. Mix in 1 teaspoon of salt. Heat the mixture until it just begins to boil and then turn heat down. Simmer for 5-7 minutes. Allow the pepper and vinegar mixture to cool completely.

Carefully pour the pepper mixture into a blender. Make sure the lid is on tight and puree. Pour the mixture into a jar and tighten the lid. Place the jar in the refrigerator and allow it to steep for 3 weeks.